


somewhere, in the new world

by wandr



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Action, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Past Jihan, futuristic seoul, side gyuhao - Freeform, side seokhan, space age, underground boxing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-03
Updated: 2018-01-03
Packaged: 2019-02-27 23:47:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13259151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wandr/pseuds/wandr
Summary: Soonyoung despises Nu-Seoul's vibrancy just as equally as he craves it. In a city of technology and luxury, crime and poverty, he struggles to find his place. Wonwoo introduces him to a world beneath the surface.Near-future/Action AU.





	somewhere, in the new world

**Author's Note:**

> **prompt #139: futuristic space age boyfriends soonwoo!!!**
> 
> (full disclosure though, while the au is /futuristic/ and /space age/, there isn't any explicit space action going on)
> 
> big shoutout to [rani](http://archiveofourown.org/users/markrenton/) and [kait](http://archiveofourown.org/users/owl/) for supporting and keeping me sane throughout the writing process, and to [rabaab](http://archiveofourown.org/users/cuddlebone/) for taking so much time to refine this with her god-tier beta eyes. i really couldn't have done this without you guys!
> 
> another shoutout to muse's discography for fuelling me for hours on end 
> 
> and a final shoutout to [swn](https://twitter.com/soonwoonet). ilu guys!

A thick cloud of smog covers Nu-Seoul, yet it casts no darkness upon the neon skyscrapers that line the city’s nightscape like kaleidoscopes of artificial light. It’s nearly midnight, but in this sleepless city, hovercars zip along skylanes into the early hours, the sirens and the smoky downtown air the night brings coaxing most to rest with both eyes open. But not all; the city’s few silver-spooned rest easy, ensured the luxury of sleeping soundly through the night.  
  
Soonyoung doesn’t have that luxury, though he yearns for the thrills and indulgences wealth brings. Presently, he sits on a creaking barstool as Jeonghan pours him his regular: soju on the rocks. When ready, the ponytailed bartender slides the drink soundlessly across the bench. Soonyoung wraps his hand around the glass, condensation frosting its circumference, chilling his fingertips.  
  
He downs the drink in a shot.  
  
Soonyoung has no choice but to make do with his life, much to his chagrin. For the time being, Soonyoung is twenty-one and overworked, yet barely getting by. When machines can complete tasks cheaply and with more precision than humans, how can anyone expect a decent wage?  
  
“Rough day?”  
  
Soonyoung almost doesn’t hear Jeonghan’s voice, too focused on the cleaning robot he’s watching roll across the floor. It’s a new model, a gaudy silver thing, and Soonyoung wonders how his bartender friend could afford it. Jeonghan’s bar is small and quiet, though it wasn’t in the past. Most prefer the upscale bars in Nu-Seoul city, the ones filled with glass chandeliers and electric blue lights and bass-heavy tracks that thump through the veins of the bodies swaying through the night. To most, Jeonghan’s bar pales in comparison; it’s too retro, too twenty-first century. So, on this night, like the numerous ones before them, Soonyoung and Jeonghan are alone.  
  
The robot makes a metallic ding. Task complete.  
  
Jeonghan coughs lightly, and Soonyoung realises he hasn’t replied. _Rough day?_ He pours an ice cube into his mouth and bites down. “As usual,” he finally responds.  
  
Soonyoung watches Jeonghan glance at him and catches him worrying his lip. In fleeting moments like these, Soonyoung is reminded of the Jeonghan he knew in high school; the seventeen-year-old who worried over his friends endlessly, the boy who tilted his head back and smiled widely when he laughed. Adult Jeonghan can’t afford that vulnerability.  
  
Soonyoung quashes the nostalgia he feels rising in his chest, locks it up and swallows the key. He pours another ice cube in his mouth before smiling at his old friend. “So how’s Seokmin?”  
  
Jeonghan laughs. Soonyoung’s missed the sound.  
  
“That fool? Yeah, he’s good. Never changes for anyone. A breath of fresh air, as always.” Jeonghan turns around, stacking glasses into a dishwasher along the back wall. There’s a pause for a moment, and from the side Soonyoung sees Jeonghan biting his lip, which means he’s mulling over his next few words. Jeonghan eventually presses a button and the dishwasher makes a shrill beep, like a monitor flatlining. “He asks about you, you know. When he’s back from campaigns.”  
  
Soonyoung’s smile falters at Jeonghan’s last words. “Really?” _Well_ , that would explain his numerous rejected calls to Seokmin— the signal’s never good in space. Soonyoung’s grip on his glass tightens a bit, and he hums to himself to suppress the feeling of betrayal threatening to spear through his voice. “How often is that? He never told me he accepted the promotion.”  
  
_And neither did you_. The words linger at the end of Soonyoung’s sentence, unsaid but implied. He sees Jeonghan’s shoulders tense slightly. His friend's probably already sensed where this conversation is heading. They’ve had similar ones more times than he would prefer.  
  
While Jeonghan’s forming his response, the front door opens, momentarily disturbing the room’s soundproofed ambience with pulsing hovercar engines and ashy midnight air. The smell makes Soonyoung’s hand itch for the packet of Dunhills in his pocket.  
  
“Space is vast,” Jeonghan eventually replies, nonchalantly, as he wipes down the bench. “It’s natural that campaigns are lengthy too.”  
  
“Every four months? Seven?” Soonyoung queries as he swirls the remaining ice around his glass, ignoring Jeonghan’s deflection. “Once a year?”  
  
Jeonghan stops wiping. When he looks up and reads the hard-set defiance on Soonyoung’s face, the same high school stubbornness signalling that he won’t budge, he lets out a defeated sigh. “Twice a year. Look, Soon-ah, the job isn’t as bad as we thought it was... how we thought of it in high school, after the incident.” _The incident_. Jeonghan momentarily diverts eye contact as he says it, before returning his gaze to continue. “He enjoys being around people and discovering new things, and since it’s a government job, the pay’s stable...”  
  
“They just… they just keep stealing more of us away. Why spend time conquering the unknown when the known’s fucking shit?” Soonyoung isn’t listening anymore, speech slurred and head heavy with alcohol and anger and regret. _The incident_. “What if he goes the same way as _Josh?_ ”  
  
There’s a loud clang of metal and Soonyoung jumps and sobers up, but it’s just the sound of another customer pulling a barstool. It makes Soonyoung backtrack to what he’s just said; his eyes widen. His gaze shifts to his friend behind the bar, and he feels a sharp pang of guilt seeing the pain painting Jeonghan’s face at the mention of his old boyfriend. Soonyoung quickly speaks up once more, but this time slowly, sincerely. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that, you know I didn’t. It’s just…” He runs a hand tiredly through his sweaty hair. “I’m just stressed. Rent’s nearly due, y’know?”  
  
He shifts and squeezes his eyes shut for a moment, expecting a retort from Jeonghan— he’d been an insensitive asshole, he deserved it. But when he only hears his glass being lifted off the bench and placed into the dishwasher, Soonyoung opens his eyes. He watches Jeonghan tuck a loose strand of hair behind his ear and in a split-second the years that have passed flash by in the hollowness of Jeonghan’s cheeks, in the sallowness of the skin beneath his eyes. The only unchanged feature is the tired smile he offers Soonyoung; a tiny quirk of one of the corners of his lips.  
  
“It’s okay. And the drink’s on me.”  
  
Soonyoung doesn’t even have time to respond before Jeonghan’s flirting with the customer who had arrived amidst their talking, finger twirling through his hair and head tilting back in a tinkling laugh.  
  
  
  
It's one day after speaking to Jeonghan and two days before his rent is due that Soonyoung realises the extent of his debt. It's this misfortune that brings him to reluctantly trudge his hoverbike to the local mechanic’s, in hope that he'll be able to sell it for a hundred or two. Just enough to tide him over until next month.  
  
The smog isn't too bad today— when Nu-Seoul's air is particularly thick with pollution, city-wide announcements are made advising Seoulites to wear filtered masks. The masks look like high-tech hazmat ones, a sleek metallic blue with two filters jutting from each side. They make the wearer look like an oversized fly. Soonyoung would never be caught wearing one. For once, he’s glad about not being able to afford something.  
  
On this day, Soonyoung wears black joggers and a sleeveless burgundy coat that bunches into a high collar at his neck. He glances at the directions on his watch’s screen, its GPS leading the way. Jeonghan had recommended the place to him a few months prior; it’s a small garage downtown that he used to service his hovercar at before Seokmin received his raise.  
  
Turning the block's corner, Soonyoung suddenly sees someone up ahead, lying in a sleeping bag beneath a nearby apartment. He chews on his lip, his heart rate increasing with every forward step he takes. In the second the two cross paths, Soonyoung feels something tug within him, to open his wallet or his mouth to offer positive, empty words at the least; instead, he stares hard into his bike and crosses the street.  
  
The garage sits beneath a cluster of tacky apartments that surge high enough into the sky that their uppermost levels are enshrouded in the grey mist above. The infrastructure downtown is a far cry from the extravagance of the city centre, its buildings like anthills compared to the grandiose metallic high-rises of Nu-Seoul city. Possibilities for redevelopment are bleak when the bulk of public funding goes towards the city's space exploration program, the less-fortunate left to devices they don't even possess.  
  
Soonyoung shakes his head and rolls his bike through the building’s wide entrance. The air of the shop is thick with grease and metal, wheels and bits of engines scattered haphazardly across the cracked concrete floor. Soonyoung scopes the area, but there’s no one in sight.  
  
"Hello?" Soonyoung calls out as he wipes the sweat that’s gathered on his forehead with one arm, the other clutching his hoverbike's handlebars protectively. There’s no response. Soon after, he hears the loud clank of metal against metal, sounding out from somewhere to his left, perhaps from the next room. He follows the noise in.  
  
Inside is a wide brick room filled wall-to-wall with tires and grease-slicked metal. In the back corner is a workbench scattered with tangled wires and other electricals Soonyoung doesn’t recognise (he’s never been good with technology). In the middle of the room, a hovercar that’s seen better days is suspended in the air by two concrete slabs. Wrenches and bolts surround it. From underneath it, Soonyoung sees a pair of dark navy trousers and boot-clad feet poking out.  
  
“... Hello?” Soonyoung repeats, creeping closer. The man doesn’t respond, only continuing to tinker at the underside of the vehicle, so Soonyoung kicks his hoverbike’s side-stand down so he can get the guy’s attention by tapping him on the leg. Soonyoung squats down beside the pair of grease-scuffed trousers, reaching carefully to prod the man’s right calf. But after he does, his hand freezes— it’s strange. Beneath the fabric of the man’s pants, where he was expecting to feel the give of soft skin, it’s cold and hard. Almost… metallic?  
  
Regardless, he still doesn’t respond. Soonyoung pays it little thought and taps his other leg, immediately making the man jump and bang his head against the underside of the hovercar. A string of obscenities are mumbled and rise in crescendo as he finally rolls out from beneath the vehicle.  
  
“Can I help you?”  
  
_Well_. When he finally comes into clear view, Soonyoung immediately realises why Jeonghan had been so diligent with his hovercar’s quarterly check-ups. The man who rolls out from beneath the vehicle, getting up from the floor with a rough brush-down of his oil-stained clothes, is about the same age as Soonyoung but at least two inches taller. The white tank top that hangs off his lanky frame is smeared with grease and polish, and the grime stretches along the rest of his body to the mechanic’s goggles that are perched atop his dishevelled brown hair.  
  
"Uh..." Soonyoung drawls. The man blinks and rubs his crown, probably where he bumped his head, and it shapes his straw-like tufts into even more of a bird's nest. Some strands escape the goggles that push his fringe off his forehead, hitting the rest of his face. His eyes seem sharp and intimidating at first, but Soonyoung sees them underlined with something else... "Patience?"  
  
The man quirks an eyebrow and Soonyoung reminds himself to think in his head and not out loud. Backtracking to what he originally came for, he speaks again. "Uh, yeah. I'm looking to sell my bike." He pushes it in front of him. "It's not much, but I thought it'd be worth something. For restoration and reselling, maybe. What d’you think, ...?"  
  
"Wonwoo," the man fills in absentmindedly, focused on the bike, reaching out to inspect it more closely. As he looks over it he hums and clucks his tongue, occasionally mumbling out words that Soonyoung doesn't quite catch. He does notice something slight in Wonwoo's speech, however— the remnants of a dialect, peeking out with certain words.  
  
"Yeah…," Wonwoo gets up after some time, scratching the back of his head and looking like he's thinking hard about his next words. "I'm sorry, but the bike's not worth enough to get restored. The engine's too worn out— in the end, it'd cost more to fix it than any buying price I could offer."  
  
At this, Soonyoung feels his insides collapse. Not worth enough? What else is he supposed to do; he’d already negotiated with his landlord to push his payments back a week. The old man’s patience is wearing thin. Soonyoung runs a hand through his hair, flicking through his options. There’s nothing. “Are you sure? Not even for spare parts?” He asks, worrying his bottom lip. He ordinarily hates being on the receiving end of pity, but at this point, he’s desperate. “It’s for rent... even a twenty would help.”  
  
As Soonyoung speaks, all Wonwoo can hear is the genuine desperation that resonates in the stranger’s voice; it gnaws at him guiltily. He knows it too well.  
  
“Okay, okay, okay. Look,” Wonwoo interrupts eventually, flaring his nostrils in deep thought, rubbing away the grime stuck to his nose with the back of his hand. His eyes flick towards the door, and he sighs before whispering lowly. “You heard of mecha-boxing? Underground sport?”  
  
Soonyoung furrows his eyebrows in confusion, opening his mouth to speak before closing it again when he realises that he has nothing to say. He waits for Wonwoo to continue.  
  
“Okay, so… what was your name?” Wonwoo asks while walking to swing the door shut; Soonyoung responds in turn. “Alright, Soonyoung. Mecha-boxing isn’t that different from how it sounds— it’s boxing, but with external mechanical or electrical modifications. Or both, if you’ve got a decent engineer.”  
  
Wonwoo quickly walks over to his workbench, a slight spring in his step. His voice rises slightly too, and Soonyoung can tell he’s trying to conceal excitement. For a heartbeat, Wonwoo seems more like a boy playing with legos than a twenty-something-year-old mechanic. It’s endearing.  
  
“See this?” Wonwoo asks as he heaves something long and clunky out of the bottom of his drawer. The object he’s holding looks like an elbow-length metal glove: hinges sit at joint-areas, allowing movement, and long flaps along the forearm open to reveal bumpy silver ridges. “This is a glove. Engineers build them for their boxers, and boxers wear them during matches.” He raps against the metal with his knuckles and smiles at the clinking noise it makes. “They’re a bit tougher than regular boxing gloves.”  
  
Wonwoo feels dryness in his mouth from speaking so much at once, so he pauses and takes the opportunity to glance at Soonyoung. The same confusion from before continues to paint his face. Wonwoo sighs again. “Look. What I’m trying to get at here is that the sport’s high stakes, high profit. If you know what you’re doing, betting is quick money.”  
  
Wonwoo’s prior excitement is quickly draining, and soon it’s replaced with a quiet seriousness that makes Soonyoung listen close. “If you’re really desperate for cash, meet me outside the karaoke place near the old Myeongdong train line. I’ll take you to watch a match, teach you the rules and how to bet smart. Friday, 8:00 PM.” Glancing at the workbench clock— it’s nearly closing time— Wonwoo takes his goggles off and begins leaning down to place them in a rucksack on the floor. He eyes Soonyoung one last time, quirking an eyebrow in question. “Deal?”  
  
There’s a beat of quiet, and Soonyoung looks to his bike, then to Wonwoo. In this moment, Soonyoung feels something deeply-buried within him ignite, a spark, a chance at a new beginning and a better life. Or at least, a chance to mend the broken parts of his old life before he blinks and he’s forty and still broke and working in a dead-end job below minimum wage. Soonyoung holds onto that spark when he answers Wonwoo; there’s just something about the guy, his eyes too sincere for a person like him, too true for a world like this.  
  
“Deal.”  
  
  
  
The days leading up to Friday find Soonyoung questioning and reconsidering what he's getting himself into. He'd heard rumours of sports similar to mecha-boxing in the past— though highly prohibited, underground activities weren't uncommon in Nu-Seoul— but prior to meeting Wonwoo, his knowledge was limited to hushed voices on the street and stray comments on online forums. It's essential for illegal sports like mecha-boxing to remain under a veil of secrecy for them to persist. The punishment for participating in high-profit activities of the sorts, ones that the government can't regulate and subject to tax, is severe.  
  
Yet, despite all this, the spark in Soonyoung remains; it’s fanned on by all the things he's dreamed of experiencing but have always been too far from reach, a near-impossibility for a person of his standing in a city like Nu-Seoul. Here, if you’re born poor, you stay poor. When he thinks to the past his fist tightens; he didn't dream of penthouse suites and luxury watches— of _success_ — to end up working overtime in a factory manufacturing the same high-end goods a younger Soonyoung yearned for.  
  
That Friday evening, when he hops off his hoverbike (as usual, he doesn’t bother hitting its kill switch; no one ever tries stealing the junk-heap) about a block away from the old Myeongdong train line, he feels self-assured. Though he's never dabbled in betting, he's a fast learner and has always had a knack for maths. Secrecy isn't an issue, either; despite having a mouth able to run like water from a broken tap, Soonyoung’s never had trouble being serious and keeping words to himself when necessary.  
  
Yes, he has a good feeling about this. If Soonyoung closes his eyes, and reaches out, he can almost feel his velvet-covered dreams sliding into his grip.  
  
The evening breeze is a pleasant contrast to the remnants of summer humidity that linger in mid-August. Soonyoung feels the cool air flow through the armholes of his sleeveless hoodie, making its thin fabric wave and billow. Despite Myeongdong's popularity as a shopping district, the alley Soonyoung walks down is bare, save for the residential buildings at his sides that are shrouded in a diluted-sunset glow. They surround him like sky-high matchsticks, lighting up an urban landscape that is slowly melting into night.  
  
When Soonyoung exits the alleyway, the karaoke place that Wonwoo had mentioned comes into the centre of his vision. It isn't difficult to spot— despite being old in design, it's easily the brightest building in the shopping strip. A tacky neon sign stretching across its front glares at him, reading _NORAEBANG_. Soonyoung feels adrenaline rush through his veins and pull him towards the building. A moth to a neon-yellow flame.  
  
He spots Wonwoo when he's nearly reached the building's front door. For a moment, Soonyoung doesn’t recognise the guy. Tonight, he wears cargo pants and a utility jacket with too many pockets in lieu of his usual mechanic get-up. He’s noticeably more clean, though his hair remains unruly, sticking out in tufts around his sharp face and round-rimmed glasses. A brown duffel bag that clinks every time he moves is slung across his back. It's a bad outfit and Soonyoung curses Wonwoo's frame for making it look half-decent.  
  
Wonwoo snaps out of his thoughts to look up at Soonyoung as he nears. He shifts his weight off the building’s window, raising an eyebrow and nodding clippedly in greeting. “You came.”  
  
Soonyoung instantly catches the amused tone in his voice, but before he can even think of rebutting Wonwoo’s apparent distrust in him, the man is motioning to be followed into the building.  
  
Like its exterior, the noraebang’s interior design is flashy yet outdated. Though otherwise dark, LED lights swirl and paint the peeling navy walls and pilling carpeted floor in flashes of vibrant colours. As Soonyoung is led down a hallway lined with karaoke rooms, he thinks that the retro vibe reminds him of Jeonghan’s joint— a relic of the previous century, frozen in space but not time.  
  
Eventually, Wonwoo leads Soonyoung into a karaoke room at the very end of the hallway. It doesn’t look any different from the others, so when Wonwoo makes himself comfortable on the cushioned seat opposite the room’s karaoke machine, Soonyoung furrows his brows in confusion.  
  
Soonyoung scans the room. It just looks like a regular karaoke room set-up to him: flashing disco lights, peeling cushioned seats, a coffee table, and a tall karaoke machine with a plasma screen fixed into the wall. He looks back to Wonwoo expectantly, but now the guy’s stretching his legs out to comfortably rest on the coffee table.  
  
“Um?”  
  
“Might be a few minutes.” Wonwoo smirks and nods to a mic on the table, beside his outstretched legs. “Those are working, you know. You can get in a song or two to kill time.”  
  
Wonwoo is _revelling_ in his confusion. Soonyoung quickly feels frustration building inside him; he’s always hated being out of the know, but he also doesn’t want to blow what may be his only chance at entering the underground.  
  
“But why are we… _here?_ ” Soonyoung asks, waving his arms at the karaoke machine to punctuate. There’s a ballad-singing woman in the music video autoplaying on the screen. Soonyoung immediately recognises the tune and feels a brief airiness in his chest. His mum used to like the song. He turns his attention back to Wonwoo.  
  
“I expected us jumping down manholes, walking through drain pipes. But a… _noraebang?_ ”  
  
As Soonyoung continues, he doesn’t notice that Wonwoo isn’t listening to him anymore and is instead attentively typing a series of messages into his watch. After a quiet ding signals a received message a few moments later, he turns his watch off with a small, satisfied nod and resumes listening to Soonyoung.  
  
“... _And where’s the entrance supposed to be?_ ”  
  
There’s muted beeping from across the room. Wonwoo grins.  
  
“Hidden in plain sight.”  
  
When Soonyoung turns back to the karaoke machine, his eyes grow wide as he watches it dislodge from the wall and turn outwards like a door. As it opens, a distinctly earthy smell enters the room— it’s pleasant, like rained-on ground after a long, dry summer. It momentarily brings Soonyoung back to the park he used to walk through to school with Jeonghan and Joshua. The land was later cleared to accommodate new apartment blocks.  
  
“Hyung!”  
  
Above the now fully-opened door’s handle is a digital keypad; probably the source of the beeping. But, more prominently, on the door handle is the hand of a man who is now stepping from the dimness behind him and into the room. The first thing Soonyoung notices is the guy's _height_ — he probably only reaches the shoulders of the man's brown coat. Then, he watches as bright eyes light up impossibly more upon spotting Wonwoo, the man now moving to greet him enthusiastically with a hug and a slap on the back. Wonwoo grimaces and pulls away from his friend’s too-tight embrace to pat his back in return.  
  
Though well-built and taller than most people Soonyoung's met, there’s an amicable energy about the man that makes Soonyoung feel at ease despite everything. His intuitions are proven true when Wonwoo’s friend notices him and he’s pulled in for an equally enthusiastic handshake. He learns that the man’s name is Mingyu, and that he’s an engineer for a boxer called Minghao.  
  
Mingyu smiles. “Me and Hao are pretty new to the scene, but Wonwoo and the others were quick to make us feel at home.”  
  
It’s when Mingyu motions for them to follow him through the door that Soonyoung notices what looks like narrow metal stairs leading downwards into darkness, a sign above them in hangul, and he realises—  
  
“ _Escalators_ ,” he breathes out, eyes wide. “This is the entrance to old Myeongdong Station.”  
  
“One of the entrances,” Mingyu clarifies. “But I think the boys concealed most of the others... they weren’t in very ideal locations.” He scratches his head sheepishly. “We wouldn’t want a kid from the local school walking in on someone losing a tooth.”  
  
“Mm,” Wonwoo nods to Soonyoung as they begin making their way down the rust-covered steps. When the door closes behind them there’s the sound of an electronic lock sliding into place. “When the station was shut down after the earthquake a few decades back, its entrances weren’t fully sealed-off and there were still some tunnels intact. I’ve heard that the mecha-boxing scene was set up here about ten years ago.”  
  
“It’s been around for that long?” Soonyoung asks as he turns on his watch’s flashlight. He takes care to watch his step as they make their way down the dark and seemingly endless escalator. “No one’s tipped off the authorities in all this time?”  
  
Wonwoo turns to give Soonyoung a pointedly suspicious look, to which Soonyoung raises his hands defensively. “ _Hey_ , just asking. A guy from my work started dealing on the side and the cops were on it in less than a week.”  
  
Wonwoo scoffs. “The mecha-boxing scene is... we’re just. Different. The boxers and engineers come initially for the money, yeah, but most of us start because we’re at rock-bottom. _Below_ rock-bottom.” Wonwoo turns his own flashlight on, and from behind him, Soonyoung watches his dark hair glow. “But we stay because we become family. The money’s just a plus, after we’ve earned what we need to survive. Most of it goes back into upgrading and improving our equipment.”  
  
“Besides,” he adds, more quietly, as they reach the bottom of the escalator and he shines his flashlight ahead of him, “the higher-ups circulating the money in this game enjoy watching us beat each other too much to let the scene shut down.”  
  
Soonyoung slowly nods at this, brows furrowing as he processes the information. His attention is diverted, however, when he steps off the escalator and looks directly ahead of him. As he looks wide-eyed around the vast space barely shrouded in their flashlights' glow, he's taken back to the old Korean movies he'd watch with his mum as a kid. He's never seen the old subway station up-close before; it’d closed down long before he had been born.  
  
As the trio walks through the station's hallway, Soonyoung shines his flashlight on every object he passes: cobweb-covered adverts of dated car models, abandoned clothing boutiques, a locked-up convenience store still filled to the brim with stock. Large cracks in the walls and floor from the earthquake fill the hallway with an earthy scent that Soonyoung breathes in deeply, letting it fill his lungs. It's an atmosphere unlike any he's experienced, so different from the smokiness of Nu-Seoul, so far from the lights that are so bright they're blinding. It's amazing.  
  
Finally, they round the hallway corner and it’s akin to waking up from a deep slumber. Soonyoung blinks thrice, closes his eyes, and then they fly open.  
  
He's awake.  
  
A barrage of sound both lifts him from the ground and knocks him off his feet: shouts, coins, laughter, metal and movement join in chorus, filling every space with life. Warehouse lights swing haphazardly from the ceiling, coating the walls and stalls and groups of people that are scattered around the graffitied station floor in patches of orange light. Once more, Soonyoung blinks thrice and closes his eyes, hurriedly etching the sight into his mind’s eye like it's a dream to be lost upon awakening.  
  
Mingyu and Wonwoo stroll forward and hop over the defunct ticket barriers separating them from the rest of the hubbub. A slightly dazed Soonyoung shakes his head and soon follows suit.  
  
In the station's centre is a large boxing ring not unlike those Soonyoung's seen in movies, albeit grittier, more rough-and-ready. The concrete platform rises about a metre off the ground, its perimeter lined with red and blue rope held up by poles. Light gathers in its middle, almost in reverence. Spotlighting it. Soonyoung wonders how it would feel to bask in its centre.  
  
A voice calls his name, pulls him back down.  
  
"Soonyoung," Wonwoo grins. "Welcome to the underground."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well. this was a whole lot of world-building and not much else. (also i’m using the term engineer extremely loosely in this world..... i know..... i am a knob.)
> 
> comments and feedback highly appreciated and stay tuned for the next chapter, to be released (hopefully) soon!


End file.
